Mucha Lucha Libre

You would think that the genre of crime-fighting masked men wouldn't be so odd. There's Batman and Robin and Daredevil... and the Blue Demon.

Wait.

The Blue Demon? Why that is not a member of the Hall of Justice! No. he is a member of the pantheon of Mexican wrestling (Lucha Libre) and suave personality.

A.S. Hamrah of the Boston Globe sums it up with gusto in his June 11 article, Fight Club.

If the new Jack Black comedy ``Nacho Libre," from ``Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess, does nothing else, it will serve to remind moviegoers that bulky heroes once walked the earth, at least south of the border.

These noble men fought evil, which appeared to them in the form of vampires, mummies, and mad scientists. They fought this evil wearing masks. And tights. And sometimes capes. They spoke Spanish, except when their voices were dubbed into English.

Whichever language they spoke, their real language was the Esperanto of flying kicks and choke holds. In Mexico it's called ``lucha libre." Lucha: fight, struggle, strife -- wrestling. Libre: loose, brash -- free.

I wasn't fully initiated until I spotted a gem of a DVD while in the checkout line of a Wal-Mart in New Braunsfeld, Texas. This thriller titled, El Castillo de las Momias de Guanajuato, has it all: wrestling, midgets, zombies, a red VW van, science, the occult, babes in bondage and wrestling. Did I mention wrestling?

The plot is very complex. From the review on Amazon:

Dr. Tanner, who was expelled from the medical association long ago, is planning revenge. However, he needs a heart transplant first, and commands his midget servants to kidnap Dr. Simmons, his old enemy. Chaos ensues! Who will win? Good or evil???